How to Backup Outlook Contacts in Microsoft Outlook 2016 [With Pictures]

I have spent years in a manufacturing industry where most of the official communication was done through email configured on Microsoft Outlook. Taking backup of Microsoft outlook was one of the most crucial tasks I was responsible for. Right from CEO to department heads, our IT team was very particular about Outlook backup. Although there is a single backup file of all the Outlook data, you still need to backup Outlook contacts separately in csv format. You can import your contacts to any other application or device from this csv file very easily. If you also want to learn how to backup contacts in outlook 2016 and then export them to excel or csv file then read along this article .

Location of Outlook Data file

Once you have setup your company email account in Microsoft outlook, all the data including your emails in Inbox, Sent box and Outbox folders, Contacts, RSS Feed or Calender settings are saved in a single .pst file. You can check the target path of this file by navigating to File>Account settings>Data files.

 

Another way to open the data file is to go to File and click “Open and Export”.  Now from the various options click “ Open Outlook Data file”.

You can manually copy this file to back up all the Outlook data or use  another inbuilt utility to export the data file to the desired location.

How to Backup Outlook Contacts-Step by Step Instructions

Go to File and click “Open and Export‘ and Navigate to ‘Import/Export’.

It will open Export Wizard showing various options. Click “Export to a file”.

Now if you want to export Outlook contacts to Excel, you need to select “Comma Separated Values” and click “Next”.

In the next step, under the email ID, select Contacts folder and click Next.

 

Note: You can create more than one email account in Microsoft outlook. You can also add Gmail account in Outlook 2016 and receive the email messages of all the email service providers on this single application.

In the next screen, you can select the Destination folder on your computer to save the Contacts file.

That’s it. You can now check the csv file with all the details.

“Note: The csv file opens in excel by default. You can also save .csv file as .xlsx (excel) file.”

Wrapping Up

You have just learned how to backup Outlook contacts and exported contacts to excel sheet. In case you need to setup Outlook in new PC, you can easily import all the contacts from the csv file. Kindly share your views if you have something to say about Microsoft Outlook backup.